


Permission

by ElwritesFanworks



Series: Grantchester drabbles [2]
Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Affection, Alcohol, Bi-Curiosity, Boys Kissing, Drabble, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Kissing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Feels, Friendship, Heartbreak, M/M, Making Out, Not Beta Read, Period-Typical Homophobia, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Kissing, Post-Break Up, Romantic Friendship, Sloppy Makeouts, Slurs, Spoilers, how could you Daniel Marlowe??, we must protect leonard's heart at all costs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElwritesFanworks/pseuds/ElwritesFanworks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sidney hates seeing Leonard suffer.</p><p>A sequel to 'Fairness'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permission

**Author's Note:**

> just caught up with grantchester season 2. this is set after the last episode but deviates in that the whole Amanda reconciliation did not happen. 
> 
> also, this is a sequel to my earlier fic Fairness, which is needed to make this make sense.
> 
> so to recap: crappy drabble banged out in an hour after a horrible week of no sleep and mental health issues? yes. boys kissing? yes. impulsive sidney and leonard actually getting some loving for a change? yes and yes.
> 
> hope you enjoy.

Sidney had hoped the comfort he’d offered would’ve done the trick, but when he found Leonard sitting up in the kitchen with a bottle, he wasn’t exactly surprised. He did note that, by the flush on the man’s face, he’d been drinking for some time, and, by the streaking wetness on his cheeks, had been weeping for most of that time.

Uninvited, Sidney took a seat across from his fellow churchman, poured himself a drink, and offered Leonard an understanding smile.

“I’d say ‘I know how you feel,’ but I’m sure you already know that,” Sidney admitted. “How are you finding it, the Chambers method for coping with heartache?”

Leonard cracked a watery grin.

“It suits you better, I think,” he managed, then fell silent. For a time, the only sound was that of the re-filling of glasses as they worked their way through the rest of the liquor together.

“S-Sidney?” he said at last, setting his empty glass down on the table-top.

“Mm?”

“You couldn’t… help me t-to my room…? I’m not… steady, right now. On my feet.”

Sidney nodded and put the now-empty bottle away before offering his arm. Leonard clung to him as they made a slow and stumbling journey to the drunken vicar’s room.

“Your quarters await, sir!” Sidney said with a flourish and Leonard huffed out a pitiful sob of a laugh.

“Are you going to be alright?” Sidney asked. “Or would you like me to sit up with you a bit? We can talk, if you like… or pray, if you’d rather…?”

“I’d like to… to talk,” Leonard confessed. “Thank you.”

Sidney nodded and helped his friend to his bed, setting the slight man down before joining him, back resting against the cushions.

“You’re always so… normal with me,” Leonard remarked. “Even knowing I’m… even knowing what I am.”

“I’ve shared closer quarters with worse men, during the war. You’re alright, Leonard…  you’re a good person.”

“I’m a fool,” he lamented. “I gave my heart to someone who didn’t want it. He didn’t… he didn’t wait for me. When I went to meet him he was… engaged. With someone else.”

Sidney winced.

“That’s horrible.”

“Well. Better to know now than after, I suppose,” Leonard sighed. He sank against Sidney somewhat and laid his head on the other man’s shoulder – a testament to how drunk he was, really. Sidney found he didn’t mind – Leonard was a calming presence, even three sheets to the wind.

“I never kissed him, you know,” Leonard admitted. Sidney looked at him and cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“He… he wanted to, but I… couldn’t. Sorry – I’m making you uncomfortable, aren’t I?”

Sidney shrugged.

“Not really.”

Leonard sighed again.

“It’s not how I thought it’d feel,” he admitted. “That’s why I never kissed him. It didn’t feel like it did when –”

He stopped abruptly, recoiling with a look of shame on his face.

“When…?”

“When you kissed me,” he breathed, eyes downcast. Sidney furrowed his brow, confused.

“When I what?”

“Oh dear…” Leonard mumbled, mostly to himself. “I knew you wouldn’t remember. It doesn’t matter, Sidney – I know it was just a joke… I… you should go –”

Sidney caught the other man’s wrist, making him go stalk still.

“When did I kiss you?” he asked evenly. Leonard swallowed, eyes darting around the room wildly. His lip was trembling – Sidney realized belatedly he was staring at the dark-haired vicar’s mouth.

“You were drunk,” Leonard whispered. “You were upset about Amanda… you told me I was a good man, despite being… what I am. That I deserved to be happy. And then you… kissed me.”

Sidney let him snatch his wrist back, and Leonard commenced wringing his hands.

“Was I your first?” Sidney asked in spite of himself. “Kiss, I mean,” he amended quickly.

“Not counting the usual boyhood fumblings… yes. My first… anything. With a boy. Well, a man,” Leonard admitted, and chuckled nervously. “Good heavens, I’m terribly drunk. Don’t listen to me, Sidney – please. It’s nothing… it d-doesn’t matter.”

“Sounds like it mattered to you,” Sidney replied. He was a bit drunk himself, but not enough to excuse his passivity in the face of _this._ Amanda had made her choice. Margaret was long-gone. Loneliness ate away at the blonde like a slow-burning fire, gradually weakening his judgement.

“Seems a shame,” he mused, “that it should mean so much to one of us, when the other of us can’t remember it at all.”

He was reaching out before he knew what he was doing, setting a warm palm against his friend’s jaw.

“Doesn’t seem fair,” he mumbled, and closed the distance between them.

It was quick – just an impulsive brush of lips – but it had Leonard shaking like a leaf. When they parted, he looked owlish in disbelief.

“Y-you… why did…?” he floundered.

“Was that not the way you wanted it?” Sidney asked, already in too deep to bother trying to swim to safety. The embers of isolation were crackling to life in his belly, sparking with new flames. He was drowning in loneliness, and in that moment, Leonard was a lifeline. “Show me, then. Show me how you’d like it to be.”

When Leonard didn’t move right away, he took the man’s trembling hand in his own and set it on his stomach, above his hip.

“It’s alright,” he breathed. “I’m giving you permission. Show me what you want.”

The kiss that followed was surprisingly forceful. The hand at Sidney’s waist came up to tangle in his hair and the blonde noted, amid the general pleasantness of being kissed, two facts. The first was that he was surprised Leonard had it in him since the kiss, though unskilled, was certainly enthusiastic. The second was that he didn’t mind it anywhere near as much as he sensed he ought to.

It was no different from kissing a girl, really. Well, it was – he wasn’t leading, for a start, and there was no tacky press of lipstick on his skin – but in terms of how he felt, it was the same. The same heat in his gut – the same sense of reprieve from the circling of his thoughts, from the things that haunted him.

They broke apart to breathe and Leonard studied him nervously, red-faced, slack-jawed, and panting. Sidney thumbed away a line of saliva that had trickled down the corner of the other man’s mouth and the brunette very nearly swooned.

“You’re better at that than you have any right to be,” Sidney remarked.

Leonard nodded dumbly, pressing his own fingers against his lips, eyes unfocused.

“I’d best be going,” Sidney admitted and pulled away. Leonard’s face fell and he seemed to crumble.

“I don’t want to continue this when we’re drunk… you deserve better than that.”

Leonard squinted at him.

“But you won’t want this when you’re not drunk,” he struggled, tripping over double negatives. “You’ll go back to loving Amanda and I’ll go back to being just a _pansy.”_

Something in the way he said it felt wrong, painful, curling around the edges of the word with distaste. Sidney shook his head.

“You’ll never be _just anything_ to me, Leonard.”

He said it with all the affection he could muster, and the smile it earned warmed him as much as any kiss.


End file.
